Disclaimer: I reposted (with some changes) this from my other site.
In 2013, June 10–14, Apple had WWDC in San Francisco. For those that do not know what WWDC is, WWDC is short from Worldwide Developers Conference.
As Apple says on their website: “The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) gives developers an in-depth look at the latest in iOS and OS X. You can learn from and be inspired by more than 100 sessions led by Apple engineers, get help from Apple experts through an extensive set of hands-on labs, and connect with fellow developers from around the world, giving you the opportunity to create your best apps ever. WWDC 2013 takes place June 10–14, 2013 at Moscone West in San Francisco, California.”
One of the things that they announced that year was Sprite Kit. Apple describes it really great: “Develop high-performance 2D games with the powerful new Sprite Kit framework, which combines everything you need to animate sprites, simulate physics, and create beautiful particle systems all in one easy-to-use set of APIs.”
I wanted to start learning Cocos2d (also framework for making 2d games), but I just did not have time to start and play with it. When I saw that Apple released Sprite Kit, their own framework for 2d games, I knew I had to get some free time and play with it. I had some ideas for simple 2d games (see the picture of my sketches) but I just did not have time to play with cocos2d and make them.
As you see on the picture, on July 11 2013, I downloaded the Sprite Kit documentation and created Xcode project for my first game. At WWDC Apple had two sessions for Sprite Kit and they were quite ok, documentation was clear and you could learn really quickly by going thru it. For a week or two I was playing with it, trying out how collision work, how scenes and transitions work etc. As I sad, Sprite Kit also gives you physics, so with one or two lines of code you can get awesome collision and all physics behavior. If you have used Core Animation you will get used to Sprite Kit really fast. Sprite Kit like Core Animation has really great methods for making powerful stuff.
As I sad, I had one idea for a game where there would be circles going around on the screen and user had to tap on the correct color, simple game but interesting. As I was experimenting with circles I realized I should also have triangles and rectangles. With that three elements players should tap on the correct color and corect element type.
A lot of you know about the game Fruit Ninja and you know that you can play against your friends on one screen where one half of screen is yours and other is your friends. So the next step for the game was to make the “battle” playing mode available on the iPad (because of the screen size), so you can play even more.
So the point of the game was to tap on the correct element with the correct color. Main words in the game are “color” and “tap”. I was wondering about the game name, first solution was “TouchACol“, then my mom sugested “ColorTap“, and that name was the winner. 🙂
The plan was to finish the game for the iOS7 release so Apple might promote it a bit because it was made with Sprite Kit. I’ve sent the game for review just when Apple sent us email that iOS7 apps can now be sent for review. ColorTap was released on September 20 2013 and it might be first or second game on the App Store made with Sprite Kit.
Check out ColorTap and check out the video:
If you have some time I suggest you to check out Sprite Kit and make some cool games. This was my first game and I had zero experience in game development. 🙂
Originally posted https://medium.com/@bsevo/how-i-made-my-first-game-in-60-days-with-sprite-kit-e1958d780e29